Fireweed
Chamerion angustifolium
Also called Great willowherb
We do not have a Blackfoot or Cree name for this one yet. Tell us the name and we will add it, with your word on where it comes from.
The tall magenta spike that comes up first after a burn or a cut line. Young shoots are eaten, and the leaves are dried for tea.
Commonly shared knowledge. Learn it, gather it, and follow the protocol.
Take care
- Large quantities of the leaf are laxative.
What it is confused with
Easily confusedOther willowherbs Epilobium species
Much smaller and paler flowered. Fireweed is the tall showy one.
How to know it
- Flowers
- Four-petalled magenta flowers in a long spike, opening from the bottom upward through the summer.
- Leaves
- Long, narrow and willow-like, alternating up the stem, with a pale vein running around the leaf edge rather than out to the margin.
- Height
- Waist to head high in a good stand.
- In autumn
- Splits into narrow pods that release masses of silky white seed.
The country it grows in
- Roadsides and disturbed ground
- Mountain forest
- Aspen parkland
- Foothills and shrubland
Landscape types only. We do not publish where a patch is, and we are not going to.
When it is ready
- Stems May to JuneYoung shoots only, while they snap cleanly like asparagus.
- Leaves June to AugustBefore the plant sets seed.
- Flowers July to August
Right now it is July. Something on this plant is in season.
What it is used for
- Food and drink
- Skin and wounds
Young shoots were eaten as a green in spring.
Leaves are dried for tea. The flowers are also used to flavour and colour.
How it is prepared
- Food
Young shoots are eaten raw or lightly cooked. Older stems turn tough and bitter.
- Tea
Dried leaf steeped in hot water, mild and slightly sweet.
Protocol
Ask the plant first, and offer something before you take anything. Tobacco is what is most often offered here. Say who you are, and say what the medicine is for.
Harvest the mature plants and leave the small ones to grow. Never take the first plant you find, and never take all of them.
Take only what you will actually use. Medicine picked and then left to rot in a bag was taken for nothing.
Leave the ground as you found it. Put back any dirt you dug up, and return any plant material you do not use to the earth.
Do not gather beside roads, highways or trails, where the plants take up whatever has been sprayed or spilled there.
If you are not certain what a plant is, do not pick it and do not put it in your mouth. Ask someone. Being wrong in the field is how people get hurt.